Monkey On My Back tells the story of Barney Ross, former lightweight and welterweight champion who became a war hero with the US Marines and then after fighting the Japanese became a bigger hero fighting drug addiction. At that time films like this one, A Hatful Of Rain and The Man With The Golden Arm were making the American public get acquainted with the evils of drug addiction.
One of the key elements of Barney Ross's story that was left out was his religion. The man was an orthodox Jew who was the son of a Talmudic scholar whose father was shot to death in a holdup. Barney was born Dov Rosovsky and the Rosovsky had tough going after the death of the family patriarch. Ross rejected the formal religious teachings of his father, but of his heritage you could never make any kind of anti-Semitic crack in his presence. For reasons of a market in some ultra red state territory, that component of his story was eliminated, but it is key to understanding him.
He also worked his way out of poverty first by being a low level strong arm guy for Al Capone in Chicago. After that he decided to go legitimate in the use of his fists and graduated to boxing. The managing team of Sam Pian and Art Winch played here by Jack Albertson and Richard Benedict turned him into a champion of two divisions. That is where the film picks up Barney Ross's story.
Psychologists could best tell you why some folks have an addictive personality and what could and what will always addict people. Ross as is shown here was a free spender who loved to gamble and was constantly in hock. Considering how some fighters end up, he was almost lucky that World War II came along and he joined the Marines.
On Guadalcanal he became a hero and also caught the malaria which could only be treated as far as the pain with morphine. That part of the story is perpetually relevant because after every war we seem to breed a generation of dope addicts.
Cameron Mitchell got his career role in Barney Ross and could have contended for an Oscar if this independent film from United Artists had been properly publicized. Out the same year was A Hatful Of Rain that did have performances so nominated by Don Murray and Tony Franciosa. Mitchell's holds up every bit as well as those two. In fact 1957 was his career year as the highly acclaimed Christmas story All Mine To Give also came out with Mitchell. This should have led to bigger roles and bigger pictures, but Cameron Mitchell was off in a few years to Europe to do Peplum, spaghetti westerns, and other films, some of them pretty dreadful.
Dianne Foster does well as his loyal wife with Kathy Garver as her daughter who Mitchell adopts. And Paul Richards as the dope dealer Rico will make your skin crawl with his evil.
And this film is dedicated to Barney Ross, a champion in life as well as the ring.
